The Killing of Crazy Horse

by Thomas Powers (Knopf; $30)

There are no surviving photographs of Crazy Horse, the leader of one of the Sioux bands that killed General Custer in the greatest battle of the Indian Wars, and though it took eight hundred men to arrest him after he fled his reservation, the name of the soldier who killed him has not been recorded with any certainty. No one even knows where he is buried. Powers, a journalist and national intelligence expert, brings to these mysteries the same level of analysis found in his previous studies of the C.I.A. Nevertheless, a persistent romanticism remains. Powers, who admits to a childhood passion for Indians, lovingly details spells and incantations—the importance of burning an offering in the proper way, even during a surprise attack; the right time to make use of a small bag of totems—but gives little insight into the larger meaning of these gestures. ♦

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